Godiva

On a recent trip to CVS, I stumbled across a sale on all the Godiva chocolate bars (lucky me). Godiva has been doing a lot to make chocolate bars with new flavors, especially ones that hit up on the flavor trends of right now. The other flavors in this line include salted caramel (milk and dark), hazelnut, almond, vanilla bean and strawberry. I only saw a few of the flavors at CVS, but since the deal was a two for $4 deal, I decided to get this and the salt caramel bar.

Firstly, I have to commend Godiva for making a package that has really nice design. The photography of the chocolate with the flavor elements is really beautiful and appealing. Inside the hard paper exterior, the chocolate is beautifully protected in a gold foil wrapper.

The chocolate smells sweet with heavy notes of caramel and cream. The color is a nice middle brown with a subtle sheen. The back of the bar you can see little bums from the fruit pieces.

The chocolate is pretty sweet with nice notes cream, caramel and some cocoa. It’s a very sweet milk chocolate, but it’s tasty. The fruit pieces are just texture elements at first, you don’t really taste them right away. Once most of the chocolate has mostly melted away, then you ca taste the flavor of the fruit. I don’t really taste the tangerine or blueberry, but the mango bits really stand out. They’re flavorful and juicy, and the pieces easily get stuck in your teeth. The ripe flavor blends nicely with the milk chocolate and gives it a very exotic flavor.

This bar is tasty, more so than I thought. If you’re looking for something a little more unique than your traditional chocolate bar flavors, this bar would be good for you. Especially since you tend to see this fruit flavors blended for dark chocolate, so this is good for milk chocolate lovers. Godvia is doing a pretty good job with their new flavor line, I like where this is going.

I’ve been noticing new Godiva bars on my trips to the grocery stores and pharmacies. They have an attractive rich brown color tho them and enticing macro photography on the front. On my last trip I managed to catch some of the bars on sale, so I figured new blog fodder. Plus these new bars looked so delicious! The first I’ll review is the Milk Chocolate Salted Caramel bar.

The packaging on this is really pretty, as I mentioned. The maco photography shows stacks of this bar with pieces of hard caramel crumbs. It’s very pretty and gives you a really good idea of what you’re buying and about to enjoy. The package opens easily to reveal a gold foil protecting the chocolate. I like how they keep the gold color scheme throughout the packaging.

The chocolate is a nice matte brown color, and you can see the pieces of the salted caramel flecks in it. It smells very rich and sweet and oddly enough a little salty. It feels off to describe something as smelling salty, but these does.

The milk chocolate is smooth and creamy. It’s sweet with nice flavors of cream and vanilla. The salted caramel are hard little crispy pieces in the chocolate, and they just are bursting with flavor when you encounter them. The are light and crispy, so it’s a really great textural contrast with the smooth chocolate. The flavor is just bursting with butter and cream and a saltiness that is perfect. It’s not too salty, not does it disappear around all the sweet flavors. it stands out just beautifully and compliments the chocolate so wonderfully.

This bar was really tasty. I am personally a big fan of the salt and chocolate combination. I realize it’s not for everyone, but if you’re interesting in giving it a try, I think this bar is a good place to start. It has the right balance of chocolate to caramel to salt ratio that I feel compliments all the ingredients. I really enjoyed this, and I hope to find it on sale again soon.

Here’s the last Godiva Ice Cream truffle flavor I bought that day I discovered them in Target. Since then I’ve noticed more flavors that have been added to the line; Pistachio and Rocky Road just to name a few. I haven’t bothered with those yet. Maybe if and when I find them on sale. For these Orange and Cream truffles though, I was particularly excited about. Why? Well, cause it’s a citrus flavor and white chocolate.

This flavor held a lot of possibilities for me since, there’s a few ways that orange & cream are represented in the ice cream world. There’s orange and vanilla ice cream, there’s orange sherbert with vanilla swirls, and there’s the ever so popular Creamsicle. I am very curious as to which flavor path these truffles take.

The shell is white chocolate with a pretty, off-white color. It has a faint aroma, that of sweet orange like a creamsicle, is barely detectable.

The inside ganache is a creamy light orange color and it’s very pretty. The flavor is awesome. It tastes just like a creamsicle! It’s has that signature somewhat fake orange flavor surrounded by notes of vanilla and sweetness. The white chocolate is very sweet and gives it a slight throat burn at the end because of it. Still, this is amazing, and I’m hooked. I’d hope to find a more permanent version of this in the Godiva collection.

Ohhh, this one is my favorite out of all the Godiva Ice Cream truffle flavors. Something about the white chocolate paired with the orange flavors is just so good to me. The flavor just transcended itself, and I have to remind myself what it was exactly I was eating. Just wonderful.

Next flavor out of Godiva’s Ice Cream Parlor series is the Mint Chocolate Chip flavor. This I think was an obvious but wise choice on Godiva’s part. Or, at least that’s my first instinct as mint chocolate chip ice cream has always been a favorite of mine. Although, according to this page, it’s not even in the top 15!

Regardless, mint and chocolate have always gone well together, so it seems fitting they’re made into an ice cream themed candy. The packaging for these truffles is different from the flavor mix I reviewed earlier. Those came in a bag, and these mint chocolate chip truffles came in a tightly packed container that’s similar to the plastic drink cup you use when you get a cold drink at Starbucks. Where the bag had tons of empty space in it, this cup version is just the opposite. All the truffles are tightly packed in so there’s no room for them to shift around.

Has a dark chocolate shell, and you immediately smell the mint in it. It’s very pungent.

I take my first bite and I’m immediately reminded of a very strong Andes mint. The chocolate doesn’t deliver much taste, just a sweetness to round out the mint flavor. The mint is fresh and it leaves you feeling like you’ve just brushed you teeth, as it’s quite strong. The chocolate is soft and the mint center is extremely creamy. So it’s a nice flavor and one truffle is just enough since it’s quite potent.

These were tasty and are great if you’re a big fan of mint. I think I prefer it in ice cream more, but that’s just my personal preference.

Godiva seems to be a busy place recently. It feels like every time I’m in a store or pass by their boutique in the mall that they have some new chocolate to announce. So imagine my delight when I saw these Godiva Ice Cream Parlor Truffles in Target. They were beautifully set up at an end aisle display. These were many flavors and different packaging options for the flavors (hmm, so I want a bar, a bag, or a big bag?). Being frugal, I got a bag mix of the Ice Cream Parlor flavors I’m reviewing here, and the smaller bags of the non mixed flavors.

So in this specific mix of flavors we have Milk Chocolate, Dark Vanilla, and Milk Strawberry. They’re trying to cover the basic “ice cream” flavors, although I realize they’re mixing the chocolate candy with the ice cream. For instance, I’m guessing Dark Vanilla has a dark chocolate shell and vanilla ice cream interior. It took me a bit to figure this out, because at first I thought they were just trying to come up with unique ice cream names. D’oh!

Inside the bad there’s a pretty even mix of flavors. The flavors are easily told apart by their brightly colored wrappers: pink for strawberry, cream for vanilla and a rich brown for chocolate. I was a little disappointed about the amount of flavors in the bag, as it seemed like there was a lot of air in it before the candy actually started to take up space.

Each truffle is about the size of a golf ball.

Milk Chocolate: The aroma is sweet and not very chocolatey. The flavor is that of chocolate fudge, like the kind you get pumped onto your chocolate sundae. It is very sweet and has a nutty flavor to it, and the chocolate flavor is superficial. It is a good flavor never the less, and it’s a very nostalgic one.

Dark Vanilla: Smells sweet and rich of vanilla and cocoa. It has very deep notes to the aroma, and it has this extra creaminess to it. The vanilla interior is smooth and creamy, and tastes like cookie batter. It’s very rich and sweet. it looks like it has flecks of vanilla in it, which is impressive.

Milk Strawberry: Doesn’t smell much of anything. The strawberry interior is very rich and creamy. The berry flavor is intense and has a slight tang to it. Not sure if it’s supposed to be the strawberry or a dairy tang. It does remind me of ice cream, as the chocolate exterior evens out the more tart notes.

This is a nice mix. Granted I did prefer some of the flavors over the others, but as a whole it’s pretty solid. Worth trying if you want to try something different but is still familiar.